We still dont know what got us sick in Tokyo.
I had great luck with Tokyos plentiful public bathrooms.
Much worse luck when I tried to buy stomach medicine.
Or whatever other medicine you frequently need when youre traveling, if its at all more complicated than Tylenol.
If youre not convinced, read on.
The first medicine I bought was … a hangover treatment,I think?
It had a stomach on the box, thats all I knew.
(Pharmacies and supermarkets have many more options, but theyre less omnipresent.)
I was too embarrassed to explain to the clerk precisely what I needed my body to stop doing.
Thats the sort of personal detail I share for public blog posts.
But she did explain that Id want to take this with water.
She didnt mention that it was a powder.
I dumped a dose into a bottle of water and chugged.
It might have worked, but I wanted something more reliable.
I googled Japanese stomach medicine and got a Medium piece on 7 Must Buy Medicines at Japanese Drugstores.
Number 2, Seirogan, is a quick resolution for runny stomach.
(The brand later tweaked it to mean efficacious dew drops.)
The TV commercials all feature the same military bugle call.
So I googled again, and found Stoppa, a more familiar-feeling, if less historically rich, solution.
This time Iread the directions in English: like Seirogan, Stoppa is for taking every few hours.
Stoppa got me through the 12-hour flight home, but only with a bathroom break about once an hour.
The guy in the aisle seat was very patient with me.
What IwishI had was classic Pepto-Bismol chewable tablets, or at least the Walgreens knockoff.
I know what to do with these; my body knows what to do.
I wish Id had a handful to munch on.
The reason I say you should pack themnowis that you wont remember to pack them before your next trip.
You wont think through all the incidentals.
Ah, anything else I can pick up at a corner store, youll say.
And thats true for sunscreen and toothpaste and wide-brimmed hats.
But medicine is more complicated, and in medicine, it matters when you get something wrong.
